Topshop getting ready for high street comeback – Daily Business

In a week that saw Claire’s Accessories collapse into administration, a former icon of the high street is preparing to make a return.

Topshop has relaunched its website and is reopening standalone stores as it plans to once again be a feature of towns and cities across the UK.

It is hosting its first catwalk show for seven years in London’s Trafalgar Square, with long-time brand muse Cara Delevingne, the catwalk model, among those attending.

It will hope to revive memories of other eye-catching stunts such as the launch of the Kate Moss Topshop collection which drew crowds of shoppers.

All of Topshop’s physical stores closed after owner Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia group collapsed in 2020. The Topshop brand was bought by online chain Asos, part-owned by Danish billionaire Anders Povlsen, the richest man in Scotland. Items were sold online.

Michelle Wilson, managing director of Topshop, has confirmed that in-store shopping is coming back. She has given no timescales but said the aim was to go nationwide.

Crucially, she said lessons have been learned from the collapse of the chain five years ago as online shopping hit high streets before the pandemic intensified the crisis.

“We’re just making sure we do it in the right way so that we don’t over-expand ourselves,” she told the BBC.

The business’s imminent return has been met enthusiastically among millennials and Gen-Z who are also more ethically-conscious, and Topshop 2.0 is promising greater quality control. That will mean higher prices to protect the supply chain, a sharp difference with its earlier incarnation that offered chic styles at high street prices.

This represents a big change for Topshop. Since its demise, low-cost Asia clothing chains such as Shein, founded in China but now based in Singapore, have taken a big chunk of the market. Shein’s sales in the UK surged by almost a third to £2 billion last year and profits rose 56% to £38.3m.

“If we’re just comparing Shein, then yes, I think most brands on the planet are at a higher price point than Shein,” said Ms Wilson.

But she added that higher prices reflect a more sustainable model. “We know that when we offer great fashion and great value for money then the product does sell very well, so absolutely no concerns about that.”

The firm’s focus, she said, is very much “on the livelihoods of people within the supply chain that we partner with and also the environmental impacts of the brand.”

Aside from the competition from Asia, the British high street now features strong brands from Europe.

Fashion journalist Amber Graafland said: “If you look at the High Street now, there’s a strong Spanish presence, with the likes of Zara, and also a Swedish presence with H&M. When Arcadia collapsed, we lost that Britishness.”

She added that a lot of the High Street is “playing it safe right now”, and that could also work in Topshop’s favour if can “get that cool edge back”.

Wayne Hemingway, a designer and co-founder of Red or Dead, worked with Topshop through its heyday and said: “They brought in second hand clothes for example, that’s normal now, but back then it was seen as absolutely radical to have a shopping department store doing that.

“You had the collaborations, the London Fashion Walk catwalk, all this design and excitement at High Street prices. It was so fresh, everyone wanted to be part of it.”